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Supportive, innovative managers are source of company success

The Aon Hewitt survey of employees finds that workers are more motivated if their bosses are perceived as fair, transparent and kind.

Neil Crawford, who led the survey for Aon Hewitt, says healthy manager-employee relationships are crucial to having a solid, effective business environment. (Christian Pena / for the Toronto Star)

By Eva SalinasSpecial to the Star

Wed., Nov. 23, 2011

If anyone drives the success of a company, it’s the middlemen and women – managers and team leaders – who are able to take the vision of an organization and inspire the employees around them.

At least, it’s no coincidence the majority of staff from the highest ranking employers believe they have an effective manager, according to Aon Hewitt’s 2012 Best Employer study.

The nation-wide survey registered responses from nearly 120,000 employees from 261 participating organizations. And, for the first time, it included a separate, focused look at the role of a manager within a company.

The results were clear – employee engagement is “highly correlated” with manager effectiveness. In other words, a good manager in the workplace is key to the overall success of a company. (More than 70 per cent of employees from the top-ranked companies said they have a highly effective manager.)

“If you don’t have a leadership team who believes that people are important in the organization . . . and if you don’t have managers who are effective, it’s going to be really difficult to get the right fit and ensure people are feeling valued for the work they do,” says Aon Hewitt’s Neil Crawford, who led the study.

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But what does it mean to be a good manager?

Crawford says there are a number of questions managers should be asking to measure their effectiveness: “First, do I have a good relationship with the people that report to me? Do I know them as individuals? Am I clear about what I expect of them?” Crawford suggests. “Am I aware of a poor performer on my team? If I’m not managing that, everybody gets ticked off at me . . . Those are some of the very important things.”

Aon Hewitt has been conducting the study for 12 years and although Crawford says findings around employee satisfaction haven’t varied much over the years, there have been a number of changing external factors that have emphasized the importance of managers.

Take the recent economic turmoil, for instance, Crawford says. During the height of the crunch a few years ago, managers were pinched — either sacked or spread thin. Now that circumstances for many businesses are looking up, or at least better, expectations are high and Crawford says in some cases, manager effectiveness has dropped even further.

“The low-engagement organizations are really suffering because they don’t even have the managers with them,” he says.

Companies have either taken out layers of management or managers are being asked to do even more.

“They’re getting hit from both sides,” he says. “The wake-up call will come when you start losing a lot of people.”

The profile of staff is also changing, demanding more of managers.

“There’s a lot more diversity and being able to understand all those different needs and wants, being able to connect with a broader age, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation — we have a far more complex workplace,” Crawford says. “[Managers] have to find a way to make everybody feel included. And so you need to be able to get out of your own reference points.”

Even larger companies, with thousands of employees, have to make sure they have managers who make each employee feel supported and valued. Crawford highlights TD Bank, the largest organization to take part in the ranking in terms of number of employees, and which ranked among the best of employers.

“It doesn’t matter how big an organization is, you still have to go to work every day and everybody has a manager,” he says.

But, as the study also showed this year, a good manager has to have the backing of company heads in order to be effective.

“Managers are important, but they aren’t going to get there without an executive team that truly values people, is supportive and is providing clear direction for the future of the organization,” Crawford adds.

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